Wiki for Dr. McClurkens Courses

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You should do a total of 2-3 comments/questions/observations this week.  You do not need to post to all areas. Please do include links to sources, clips, images that are relevant to your point. -- Dr. McClurken

====== I.	How does this movie work as a secondary source? What does the movie get right about history?  ======

Although I did not enjoy this movie and was mostly disturbed by the creative choices to use a completely fictional cast when there were many participants in the real bus boycott, the setting was super accurate. The filming was actually all done in Alabama, and one of the buses used was the Montgomery bus that Rosa Parks had ridden. I've spent an unfortunate amount of time in Montgomery, and they did get it pretty right. Of course the segregated neighborhoods, rich and poor and white and Black families respectively, very separate from each other, was pretty accurate. The scenery itself is just something that's hard to replicate if you're not there. For lack of better words, even in the '50s, Montgomery was kind of a suburban hellhole and it still is. -- Jane Michael

If one wants to learn about the Montgomery bus boycott, this movie is a poor way to do so. Some of the facts of the event are true to life, but the way the movie decides to depict the events through the lens of a fictional story. This film is very unfocused; in the first half it feels like it wants to tell the story through Odessa’s eyes, focusing mostly on her life and family, then in the second half it switches to being about Miriam’s personal journey. In addition to the problems with making a story about African Americans about a white lady learning not to be prejudiced any more, this weird lack of focus leaves the film without a take on the history it's trying to talk about. And without a perspective or concrete message, the movie does a poor job of portraying its historical events. -Maris Tiller

I think this movie could have been good if they used real people and focused on the story of the African Americans who were impacted. The dangers of taking the bus for african americans is accurate as it was very dangerous for them. I’m sure the story of Odessa is accurate to what some women were going through but she is a made up character. It was also accurate how some white people treated the black people. Norman's character is an accurate representation of what a lot of people acted towards black people at this time. His joining of the council showed just how much they wanted them to be below. -Sophie Weber

While none of the characters in the film are real people, the film does mostly accurately show what the bus boycott was like. It shows how deeply segregated Montgomery, Alabama was at the time and the effects the bus boycott brought onto everyone in the community. It shows how the Black community banded together through the car pools and how a few white house wives would assist by driving their maids to work. On the other hand, the creative directors and producers really dropped the ball on having a truly accurate portrayal of the bus boycott. It would have been better if a real story with real people was used instead of creating an entirely fictional story with one dimensional characters. -Teresa Felipe

I did not feel as though this movie was particularly effective, but it did seem to be accurate. It portrayed the time period and the bus boycott well, but did so through the lens of a white person, which felt like a choice that alienated the true purpose of the film from showing the efforts of the bus boycott to teaching a white person to not be prejudiced. However, that was a tactic used by many films for a more "relatable movie" such as Gentleman's Agreement focusing on a non-Jew learning the struggles of Jewish people). It was not sugarcoated but it wasn't really the best way to present the issues either. -- Logan Kurtz

In this movie, they got some parts of the history correct. The way that the bus boycott was portrayed was fairly accurate, especially in the unorthodox ways that people had to help each other. The race relations of the time and place was another aspect that the filmmakers got right in this movie. As the racism is portrayed fairly accurately for what it looked like then. The accuracy starts to fade with the replacement of real people with a fictional storyline and characters. -Margaret Jones

I think this movie was a great secondary source of the overall time period and the discrimination that occurred. I think regarding specifics, it would not be a good secondary source considering it has a fictional cast. But overall, I think it ws accurate about how African Americans were treated and the overall tension that was in most environments. - Erika Lambert

While I did find this film an interesting watch, I do not think that it would serve well as a secondary source. Primarily, I found that it is uncertain what this film was trying to be. If it was trying to be a historically accurate homage to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, it was wildly unsuccessful. The fictional characters and white protagonist make sure of that. If it was simply attempting to be a dramatic film that happens to have the boycott as a setting, then yes, it succeeded. However, that type of film does not do any good in a scholarly setting. Overall, I thought the filmmakers could have done a much better job considering how impactful the historical event was. Unfortunately, I think this film falls under the category of dramatized and whitewashed film. -Burke Steifman

I wish that they could’ve made a movie with the original people involved, and/or their descendants. While the actors were well known, it would’ve been very cool to have actors with that connection in the movie. -Michaela Fontenot

I think that this movie is okay as a secondary source. The fact that it is told using fictional characters makes it seem as though there are not important enough stories to be telling from this time period. It tells the story of the time with good enough accuracy. The only complaint I have is that it focuses more on a white woman's reckoning with her own attitudes and beliefs towards the end and not what the focus of the movie supposedly was. It should have continued to focus on Odessa and her experiences in this time. It seemed to portray the racism of the time accurately, however. -Sarah Moore

This film was overall wishy-washy in its historical accuracy. It portrayed an accurate setting and did justice to the many obstacles faced by African Americans, yet includes a completely fictional cast at a time when there were so many historical figures the filmmakers could have picked from. I can see the benefit of wanting to make a movie about regular people and how they were affected by historical events, especially since at the end of the day not everyone who participated in the Civil Rights movement became nationally famous -- most were ordinary people. Nevertheless, it is just strange that the filmmakers chose such a famous historical event and completely fictionalized everything, especially when there are so many lesser known true stories that deserve to be told and that could have been. — Sasha Poletes

The long walk home came out in 1991. As a secondary source, the movie takes an event that happened in history and puts its own spin on it. Because none of the characters are true to life, the viewers can see what the event might have been like for a civilian at the time, but it does not provide true historical context. The made-up characters allow the filmwriters to take liberties with the story a fictional even though the setting is true. Like others, it was a little weird to see a predominantly white person's view on a predominantly black person's event, but I’m not going to begrudge a movie that was made over 20 years ago for the societal standards we have now. To sum it up, this is not a good secondary source, but it could give viewers an insight into the time and event if it was otherwise previously unknown to them. -Annika

====== II.	Problems with historical accuracy? Errors in fact? ======

====== III.	How does the film’s overall interpretation(s) deviate from scholarly historical sources? ======

====== IV.	How does this movie work as a primary source about the time period in which it was made or the filmmakers? ======

One of the most noticeable factors in this film today is its focus on white protagonists. While watching the film I was actually surprised by how relatively few lines Whoopi Goldberg had as Odessa. It was weird because as the film progressed, more and more focus was put on the life of the white Thompsons and Sissy Spacek’s Miriam Thompson in particular. As we have discussed with other 90’s films like Disney’s Pocahontas; the 1990’s in America seemed to be a time where (white) Americans realized that racism was bad but didn’t really have a very good understanding of how to deal with it or portray it on film. I think the probable reason why this quintessentially black story was told through a white perspective was because that was the only way to make it marketable in 1990. –Lucca Crowe

I was incredibly bothered by not just the white savior narrative but the white narration. A lot of films made in the '90s and 2000s about segregation have a white narrator, and more specifically, a white CHILD narrator. It was definitely an attempt at an 'unbiased' perspective, and in this film, the child even says at the end that she "didn't understand" the impact of standing at the car lot with her maid and the rest of the Black women involved in the car pool until later, and "didn't understand how much it meant" to her mother - not Odessa. Having a white child having a revelation about 'racism bad!' isn't a symptom of innocence; just privilege, since she didn't have to grow up seeing that kind of oppression and violence. It would've been significantly more powerful and fitting to even have a Black narrator, child or not, because regardless of their participation in the boycott, they would've already had a perspective on the racism and segregation of the time instead of suddenly feeling compassionate and having their little hero moment. -- Jane Michael

The film deciding (eventually) to focus on Miriam’s story rather than Odessa’s is very indicative of Civil Rights stories in film from the 90s (and even today). It’s a film made in the same vein as something like Driving Miss Daisy, showing the, more than likely, majority white audience a white character’s journey to no longer being prejudiced. It shifts the focus of the story of the Montgomery bus boycotts to being about white reactions to it, and not the actual events themselves. This is a common thing, I’ve found, in movies made by and for white people about the Civil Rights era. It shows that for the most part, white audiences simply wanted to feel good about their place in history rather than examine it critically. 
- Maris Tiller

This movie highlights the level of comfort from filmmakers and audiences in the 1990s. It’s even worse to think about how films so similar to this one, like The Help, were released in 2011. The filmmakers create a well produced film with good performances, but convey terrible and unproductive messages to their enraptured audiences. I am sure though that at the time the filmmakers thought that they were making a novel film that challenged the normal narrative. I can’t tell if it’s just my modern viewpoint that makes me more critical of the film or not. While Roger Ebert celebrated the performances by Goldberg and Spacek, he did specifically criticize the white narrator in the film, who is a grown up Mary Catharine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Walk_Home). While I do think that making movies about the Civil Rights Movement that don't only focus on Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King are important, using completely fictitious characters is also not progressive in any way for sharing these important histories. -Olivia Foster

This movie had big names, notably Whoopi Goldberg who was in films such as //The Color Purple// and //Ghost//. Her casting brought a lot of attention to this film, and to an issue that continues to be apparent in America to this day. There are so many powerful true stories that could have been shared, so I wonder why they chose to display this time period through fictional characters. -- Logan Kurtz

This film was especially insightful as a primary source due to its white savior storyline. This narrative is very typical of the time that it was made as well as being common now as well. The notion of a white savior complex/narrative is used often times to make the person making the film feel good about themselves. Had the movie used a black character as a narrator, it would’ve had a much stronger impact on the story that the movie was aiming to tell. During the 90s it was much easier to say you weren’t being racist while making a movie about a black story, even if the primary focus was on a white person. -Margaret Jones

I very much enjoyed this movie because of the blatant and sad honesty it told. I think it was very saddening and uncomfortable to watch but had a lot of honesty in it. I do not think that it had a white savior storyline, at least in my vision of the film, because I thought most of the film was centered around Whoopi Goldberg's character or in most scenes, her son standing up for his rights. - Erika Lambert

I think that because this film was created in the 1990s, this was a time period when people began to at least acknowledge the horrible acts of the past, even if not so common. I think that is shown in this film due to it speaking about the cruel history of America during the Civil Rights movement and the treatment of African Americans. - Erika Lambert

The Long Walk Home is very similar to a lot of films from the 90’s, where the lens used is just not right. Like several of the films we have watched, the filmmakers either don’t realize or don’t care that the perspective of the film is completely backwards. In a story about the struggle of African Americans, a white savior is the center of the plotline. These types of films create false narratives about real history, which does no good for society. The Long Walk Home is a perfect example of this occurrence. -Burke Steifman

Yet again we fall prey to the white knight trope within movies, this time in the form of Miriam. (white knight-ette?) She’s portrayed as a saint for just doing the bare minimum by being nice to Odessa. Like thanks for the scaled back but still very much there racism. This was a hard movie to watch, but it is important to view. I think this makes a good primary source for the time, as it is very informative to how Americans thought about these issues.  -Michaela Fontenot

Much like other historical movies released in the 1990s, this movie focused on a white character at the end instead of the black character who the movie should have been about. This movie was set against the bus boycotts during the Civil Rights Movement, so why did the story end up circling back to the white woman? Well, it is because America was not ready for anyone but white people to be the main subject of a movie. The movie Glory also fell victim to this trend. Although it was about a black regiment during the Civil War, it can be argued that it mostly focused on their white officer. Both movies are the products of a time that was not yet ready for diverse perspectives and main characters on their screens. -Sarah Moore

This film's characterization of Miriam and the white saviorism of it, perfectly fits in with the 1990s. It is a telling of the boycott, but it is still framed through the lens of a white person. It is almost like you cannot have a story about people of color without inserting a white person into it. However, what I found interesting looking through the Wikipedia page is that this movie started off as a short film by a USC graduate student John Cork. He based his screenplay off of his experiences with his maid Elizabeth Gregory Taylor in Montgomery. The film is a white savior story, but how much of the story and its portrayal is how Cork saw himself and his mother in this situation. So, the basis of the story is rooted in some truth, which I found interesting. (The short film was not directed by Cork, but by another student. Which upset Cork, so he sued. You can read about that here, along with another article about Cork and the short film itself: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-02-04-ca-40597-story.html, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-01-18-ca-24534-story.html) - Taylor Coleman

====== V. The "So, what?" question	======

As I have alluded to above, this film is weird in that it tells a quintessentially African American story through a white lens. While the story does cover some of the story from the African American perspective, the only characters that ever undergo real growth and change are white. As much as this film markets itself as the story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, it’s really a film about how white people reacted to the boycott, and about a white woman learning to put aside her light prejudices and not be a racist. To this effect I actually think the film did a good job, many of the pivotal scenes like when Odessa arrives after walking through the rain, when Miriam confronts her husband, or when Miriam decides to drive for the carpool, were all really good scenes. But my overall question throughout watching this film was, why is this story about a white woman? The answer is of course that white audiences in the 1990’s wouldn’t have supported the film financially if it wasn’t led by a white woman; nor would they likely have connected with the essential message of the film had it not been introduced to them through a white protagonist. Still, they had Whoopi Goldberg for crying out loud, and despite being one of the leading roles, she has very little to do in the film from an acting perspective. I’d like to say that in recent years we have improved in our centralization of black actors in black stories, but we haven’t really come that far; massively popular films like 2018’s Black Panther still felt the need to shoehorn an unnecessary white character played by Martin Freeman in order to appeal to white audiences. Ultimately, what I wish is that in future years we can come to a point where African American stories can be told with black actors at their head; where audiences of all races, gender, sexuality, and creed can relate to a story not only because they see someone who looks like them on screen but because they can relate to a common humanity, to a story about people peacefully rising up against oppression. –Lucca Crowe

This is such a strange film to me, based on real historical events, but with all fictional characters. While Rosa Parks. This movie basically has the same premise and plot as The Help. A white savior story about African American female house workers and their white female bosses that always end up being the noble heroes. The white children that love their African American nanny, and of course the racist husband. This movie met all the typical tropes, and did not meet any of the intended marks. The goal of telling the stories of African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement is completely lost when the real main characters of this movie are the rich, white family. Movies like this one are so dangerous to white, American audiences. It empowers white savior stories and completely diminishes the real struggles and hardships faced by African American people during the Civil Rights Era. I noticed a similar narrative in this movie as there was in Gone with the Wind.  The same relationship between Odessa and Miriam mirrors the relationship between Scarlett and Mammy, the loyal black servant and the rich, white woman that will show small acts of affection towards the women that do everything for them. This trope has been depicted in films for a very long time.  –Olivia Foster

This movie seemed like it wanted to be accurate and show an accurate depiction of life during the bus boycott but it then turned into a white savior film. Instead of focusing on the story of the African Americans who were impacted by the buses, it then turned into Miriam's story of wanting to save them and help. It gave me the same impression as The Help as they are both told through the point of view of the daughter who grew up with the black maid who loved her. This movie seemed like the focus shifted and decided to focus on the white perspective overall. -Sophie Weber

The two main characters in this movie, Odessa and Miriam are both rather one dimensional characters. Odessa doesn’t seem to have too much of a personality. She doesn’t react much to anything really which in part speaks to her strength, but at some point it becomes expected to react to the blatant racism. She didn’t even seem to have that strong of a response to her son being beaten. Miriam on the other hand does have a strong will and personality which she shows by driving for the carpool and by telling her husband Norman that she doesn’t care if he doesn’t want her to drive Odessa and that she’ll do what she likes. However, she doesn’t really have any growth of character. She starts the movie out by making a cop apologize to Odessa, and then defends these actions to her husband and brother in law. Neither her character nor Odessa have any really big change or dimension to them. With these two characters being the main characters and having Miriam fight for Odessa, it shows the movie as a white savior movie. -Teresa Felipe

Hollywood really enjoys making white savior movies. The Long Walk Home is just another example of that. The movie did a good job of showing the racism in the 50s, but that's about it. It'd be nice to say that people have gotten less racist since then and some people have, but some people haven't. The people who haven't have just been pressured into being less overtly racist by the rest of society. -Katherine Rayhart

This is a strange film, and it is difficult to decide what to make of it. It simply does not make sense why, even in the 90’s, a filmmaker would decide to make a film about the Montgomery Bus Boycott from the perspective of a white person. For me, this film is one of the most obvious examples of Hollywood effecting historical events I have seen. -Burke Steifman

This film was not worth the watch in the historical or entertainment context. For me, it was lacking in meaningful dialogue. There were moments when there was little or no dialogue and perhaps that was an artistic choice meant to represent something, but I couldn't figure out what. It becomes frustrating in that sense and also makes the storyline harder to follow. -Sarah Moore

White savior stories dominate narratives that should be focused on people of color. Long Walk Home starts off as it will be a story about Odessa, but by the end the internal familial struggles of Miriam take over. Odessa is almost completely forgotten about, she is used in the latter half of the film as a way to get Miriam to stand up for herself. But, that’s not the story that should be told in this movie. Odessa’s struggles should be at the forefront, not Miriam’s. Miriam’s struggles are not the main issue, her husband not speaking to her because she brings Odessa to work should not be the main focal point. It felt like the movie missed the mark on which story should be told. A Civil Rights Story should focus on people like Odessa, not Miriam. It should not sprinkle in MLK when it sees fit to drive a narrative. Stories like these where the Civil Rights Movement is shown through the White perspective is wrong and gives false impressions. The Civil Rights Movement was powered by Black people, and a White person should not tell that story. - Taylor Coleman

As others have pointed out, this movie is a prime example of a typical white savior story. Though always disappointing, it is not surprising that the film directors choose to veer away from African American stories and perspectives and instead focus on white characters to make films more appealing to white audiences. This trend still continues to this day — the movie The Help was not released too long ago, and contained a similar narrative of introducing issues faced by African Americans but shifting to white characters and letting them save the day. Not only does this teach audiences that white stories are more important than Black stories, but that white people did all the important work while everyone else did nothing. It is incredibly unjust to center white stories in events in which they were often not helping but rather actively working against, like the Civil Rights movement. Yes, there were white people who cared about and fought for civil rights, but at the end of the day it is not right to make it about them. -- Sasha Poletes

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